Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 We don't really have any clinical trials being conducted on strictly healthy individuals, because where do you round up 1,000 healthy people who follow an organic, plant-based diet, who engage in regular physical exercise, and who avoid all the metabolic disrupting ingredients that I commonly write about here? Where do you find people like that? Maybe only at a natural health convention, but certainly not in the population at large. Look around: the population is heavily diseased. Why are we basing all modern medical studies on the physiology of diseased people? |
| And across the board, we're seeing that consuming a plant-based diet is what prevents cancer and enhances health at many different levels, including cardiovascular health.
But here's what's fascinating about this study that you probably haven't heard in the mainstream press: it was conducted on regular, everyday people that are generally consuming unhealthy diets to begin with. |
| REPPED: Three new studies published in the journal of the American Medical Association are proving the benefit of a plant-based diet in greatly reducing the risk of cancer. The studies show that high consumption of fruits and vegetables wards off a variety of cancers. (They also show that consuming red meat multiplies the risk of colon cancer.) Another study in the same issue shows that consuming olive oil reduces the risk of breast cancer.
So here we're talking about a wide variety of cancers: prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, even leukemia and multiple myeloma. |
Michael Pollan
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 But the advantages of a plant-based diet probably go beyond whatever is in the plants: Because plant foods—with the exception of seeds—are less energy dense than most of the other things you might eat, by eating a plant-based diet you will likely consume fewer calories (which is itself protective against many chronic diseases). The seed exception suggests why it's important to eat more leaves than seeds; though unrefined seeds, including whole grains and nuts, can be very nutritious, they're high in calories, befitting their biological role as energy-storage devices. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 As a society, we can exist quite comfortably on a plant-based diet. We can get everything we need in terms of nutrition -- including essential oils, vitamins, minerals and the like -- on a plant-based diet. We do not need meat to survive as a civilization. In fact, I believe that the mass consumption of meat devolves our society, because it makes us more angry and aggressive. It makes us less humane and is an uncivilized way to use the resources of the planet to support the human population, whereas consuming and surviving on plants is an evolved and intelligent way to feed the planet. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 How to make the transition away from red meat
These are all reasons to avoid an animal-based diet and pursue a plant-based diet. Many people reading this are already following a plant-based diet, but some of you who might be considering making the change probably aren't sure exactly how to do it.
Perhaps you want to merely reduce your consumption of red meat but not give it up completely yet, which is fine, since that's the way all of us ex-meat-eaters got into plant-based diets to begin with. |
Michael Pollan
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| The Effect of a plant-based diet on Plasma Lipids in Hypercholesterolemic Adults," Amah of Internal Medicine, 2005; 142: 72S—33. Other similar trials have found striking protective effects in more traditional, plant-based dietary patterns that no single nutrient can adequately explain. In the D.A.S.H. (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) study, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fat reduced blood pressure even when salt intake and weight remained unchanged. (Lawrence J. Appel, et al. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Even though the long-term solution is to move to a plant-based diet, as a civilization, a short-term solution could include artificial meat.
Many benefits from a plant-based diet
I have probably eaten more than my share of meat for my entire life already. When I was growing up, my grandfather was a cattle rancher, so we got all the free meat we ever wanted and I ate meat constantly. I have now mostly given up meat (and red meat entirely), but I don't believe in aggressively pushing vegetarianism onto others. |
Michael Pollan
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| But the advantages of a plant-based diet probably go beyond whatever is in the plants: Because plant foods—with the exception of seeds—are less energy dense than most of the other things you might eat, by eating a plant-based diet you will likely consume fewer calories (which is itself protective against many chronic diseases). The seed exception suggests why it's important to eat more leaves than seeds; though unrefined seeds, including whole grains and nuts, can be very nutritious, they're high in calories, befitting their biological role as energy-storage devices. |
Dan Buettner
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 Rely on a plant-based diet.
Older Okinawans have eaten a plant-based diet most of their lives. Their meals of stir-fried vegetables, sweet potatoes, and tofu are high in nutrients and low in calories. Goya, with its antioxidants and compounds that lower blood sugar, is of particular interest. While centenarian Okinawans do eat some pork, it is traditionally reserved only for infrequent ceremonial occasions and taken only in small amounts.
Get gardening.
Almost all Okinawan centenarians grow or once grew a garden. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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 In a study of men who refused prostate surgery, one group of men only did watchful waiting (which is having a doc observe a patient but not intervene unless it's requested), while the other group went on an aggressive plant-based diet and stress reduction program. Their diet was low in fat and rich in selenium, lycopene (found in tomatoes), and vitamin E. The outcome: The latter group reduced their PSA levels by 40 percent, and none went on to surgery in a two-year period. Many in the control group required an operation, and their PSA levels remained elevated. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| If you eat nothing but a plant-based diet, you will be far healthier than if you were to introduce any amount of meat into your diet. All the information out there about people having nutritional deficiencies on a vegetarian diet is misguided and flat-out wrong. Unless, of course, for people are living on what I call a "junk food vegetarian diet," which is soda, chips and vegetarian processed food. Of course that diet causes nutritional deficiencies. But not a health-minded vegetarian diet. Even vitamin B12 is simple to get in sufficient quantities if you put your mind to it. |
| We can get everything we need in terms of nutrition -- including essential oils, vitamins, minerals and the like -- on a plant-based diet. We do not need meat to survive as a civilization. In fact, I believe that the mass consumption of meat devolves our society, because it makes us more angry and aggressive. It makes us less humane and is an uncivilized way to use the resources of the planet to support the human population, whereas consuming and surviving on plants is an evolved and intelligent way to feed the planet. If you consume mostly raw foods, then you also get outstanding nutrition. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 But it was not long before she, too, adopted a plant-based diet. Her mother had died of breast cancer at the age of fifty-two. And one day, at an aunt's house, just as lunch was about to begin at the aunt's eighty-fifth birthday party, Ann's sister called. She, too, had been diagnosed with breast cancer, at the age of forty-eight. Ann sat down and didn't eat a bit of that lunch. And she joined me in my dietary experiment.
Between April and June 1984, my cholesterol level fell from 185 mg/dL to 155. This still was not acceptable. |
| I was going to see to it that they followed a truly low-fat, plant-based diet.
The first patient entered the program in October 1985, and by 1988, the cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic had referred twenty-four patients to me. All were suffering from advanced coronary artery disease, and most were debilitated by angina and other symptoms. The majority had undergone one or two failed bypasses or angioplasty and either had refused further traditional treatment or were ineligible for it. None smoked, none were hypertensive.
The group included twenty-three men and one woman. |
Michael Pollan
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| Another recent study of a traditional plant-based diet found that even when you tested it against a low-fat Western diet that contained the same proportions of total fat, saturated fat, protein, carbohydrates, and cholesterol, the people on the traditional diet did much better by an important measure of cardiovascular health. What this sug-
*Frank B. Hu, et al., "Prospective Study of Major Dietary Patterns and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Men," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2000; 72:912-21. gests is that the addition of certain foods to the diet (Vegetables and fruits? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Yet diabetics, heart disease patients and cancer patients and reversing their diseases like never before by turning to a plant-based diet, engaging in regular exercise and avoiding all toxic chemicals (including those in foods, drugs and personal care products).
To those people who still think for themselves, pharmaceuticals are largely irrelevant. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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| I set a clear goal: achieving total cholesterol in my patients of less than 150 mg/dL using a plant-based diet and cholesterol-lowering medication. The emphasis was on absolute adherence to my nutritional program, which I reinforced through my interviews with patients and my reviews of their diet diaries every two weeks for the first five years, every four weeks for the second five years, and every twelve weeks for the last two years of the study. All of the participants in my research were severely ill, with disease in all three-coronary arteries. |
Gabriel Cousens
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 It took me (David Rainoshek) three years of eating a plant-based diet before I could look at a bowl of greens, or look at a glass of green vegetable juice and find my immediate response, "that's a muscle-building food," instead of seeing it as Oscar the Grouch in a can. Leafy greens are approximately 30 percent protein (amino acids, the building blocks of protein). I have had MDs argue this point with me, disagreeing that greens are so high in protein, until they see the data. We have all been socialized and taught to see greens—and vegetables in general—as sides to the "main course. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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| About two and a half years after Joe adopted a strict plant-based diet, there came a point when he was exceptionally busy professionally, under considerable stress, and he noted a return of some discomfort in his chest. His cardiologists, worried about the recurrence of angina, asked for more tests to see what was going on.
On the day of his follow-up angiogram, I went to Dr. Crowe's office after work. After we greeted each other, I thought I saw moisture in his eyes. "Is everything OK?" I asked.
"You saved my life," he declared. "It's gone! It's not there anymore! Something lethal is gone! |
| Within ten days of her starting a plant-based diet and a low dose of a cholesterol-lowering drug, the patient's cholesterol level fell from 248 mg/dL to 137. After just three weeks of therapy, a repeat scan showed restored circulation to the area of heart muscle that had been deprived (see Figure 7 in insert). There was no doubt what had happened: a profound change in lifestyle, adopting strictly plant-based nutrition, brought about a rapid restoration of the endothelial cells' capacity to manufacture nitric oxide, and that, in turn, restored circulation. |
| It made sense to me," he says, citing his Irish ancestors, who may have killed the fatted calf once a year, but who subsisted primarily on a low-fat, plant-based diet.
Each of us has friends, family, and acquaintances who are the victims of coronary disease. These people are often vigorous, in the prime of life, when they are struck down by a heart attack. If they survive, they are rarely the same again, always fearful of another attack or the onset of some complication. Those close to them share similar concerns. But the truth is that this disease need never occur at all. |
Bill Sardi
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 The latest studies don't confirm the correlation between a plant-based diet and reduced risk of breast cancer. [Breast Cancer Research Treatment, March 15, 2006; Annals Epidemiology 15: 789-95, 2005]
There is a strong correlation between the incidence of breast cancer and diabetes and a strong link between breast cancer mortality and sugar intake. [Medical Hypotheses 11: 319-27, 1983]
The link between sugar and breast cancer has been known for a long time and has gone beyond being just a hypothesis. |
Michael Pollan
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| In all my interviews with nutrition experts, the benefits of a plant-based diet provided the only point of universal consensus. Even nutrition scientists who have been chastened by decades of conflict and confusion about dietary advice would answer my question "So what are you still sure of?" with some variation on the recommendation to "eat more plants." (Though Marion Nestle was slightly more circumspect: "Certainly eating plants isn't harmful." |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 After all, millions of people living in Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and rural Africa and Asia who eat a plant-based diet are acne-free throughout their lives—so why can't you also be acne-free, if you behave like they do?"
A diet rich in plant foods provides huge amounts of antioxidants and natural antiinflammatories. Whole foods are also high in fiber and low in sugar, and do not raise insulin to any levels that are likely to be problematic. Research going back to 1977 suggested that patients with acne may not metabolize sugar very well. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 But when you avoid meat products and focus on a plant-based diet, you are creating a future filled of abundance and health. It's up to you to decide which of these futures you'd rather create.
Regardless of which future you choose, there's no judgement from me. You're free to do what you want with your life and your own body. Some people choose to abuse their bodies as chemical playgrounds, living in the moment and dying young. That's their choice. Others choose to extend their lives and honor their bodies, living an extended, purpose-filled life. That's fine, too. |
Wendy Bazilian, DRPH, MA, RD, Steven Pratt, MD, Kathy Matthews
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 We know due to overwhelming research that a largely plant-based diet can have tremendous health benefits.39 Any shift in your diet toward increased plant consumption is good and the SuperFoodsRx Diet relies liberally on plant foods, even featuring a Veggie Day. (You'll notice that most of the SuperFoods are plant-based foods.)
So you can count on the fact that soy foods can be good for you. But can they help you lose weight? The emerging answer is yes. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| Figure 2: Coronary angiograms of the distal left anterior descending artery before (A) and after (B) thirty-two months of a plant-based diet without cholesterol-lowering medication, showing profound improvement ioo%ji-1
?Percentage of deaths from heart disease and cam
?Percentage of calories from unrefined plant foods
Figure 3: Unrefined plant food consumption and the killer diseases, heart disease and cancer
Even having diabetic parents can increase your risk of developing heart disease. |
| There is no other diet that comes anywhere close to these dramatic drops in LDL, which is why we recommend a 100 percent live-food plant-based diet. To place these numbers in perspective, at the University of Toronto Dr. David Jenkins applied a vegan diet with standard cooked vegan elements such as nuts, seeds, oat bran, soy products, and plant sterols. In a four-week period, he achieved a 29.6 percent drop in LDL cholesterol. On a natural live-food vegan diet, our results in four weeks were 50 percent better, without the use of oats or soy. |
Dan Buettner
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| Eat a lean, plant-based diet accented with meat.
The classic Sardinian diet consists of whole-grain bread, beans, garden vegetables, fruits, and, in some parts of the island, mastic oil. Sardinians also traditionally eat pecorino cheese made from grass-fed sheep, whose cheese is high in omega-3 fatty acids. Meat is largely reserved for Sundays and special occasions.
Put family first.
Sardinia's strong family values help assure that every member of the family is cared for. People who live in strong, healthy families suffer lower rates of depression, suicide, and stress.
Drink goat's milk. |
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